Talk about being conflicted—I was a mess.
Sylvia was gone and I felt lost but I couldn't even spend a quiet evening with Jill, the waitress from the french restaurant in town, without feeling tremendous guilt.
I wasn't embarking on a torrid love affair, hell, I was just trying to cope with feelings of being isolated and lonely, but even that made me feel I was somehow being unfaithful to her memory.
An hour after she left I was still lying on the couch, staring into the fireplace musing on its ruby-black hell.
My mind just wouldn’t shut down and my thoughts were racing.
I got up, poured a glass of water, and stared out the window at the lake.
The chalky land glowed like radium—a forlorn moonscape—and the chill wind had returned.
It moaned plaintively and sorrowfully through the trees and dry reeds, and the broken places of neglect inside of me.
I knew staying up entertaining morose thoughts wasn’t healthy.
Besides, I had to conserve power on my laptop and cell phone, since I didn’t know when the electricity would come back on.
So, more or less out of necessity, I returned to the couch and after some tossing and turning, fell into a fitful sleep.
And then it happened.
I turned over and Sylvia was beside me—sitting on the floor, staring back at me sadly.
I was frozen either from fear or shock or both but all I could do was stare with my mouth agape.
I tried to speak, but she placed her fingers on my lips and shushed me.
I buried my face in her hair and inhaled the familiar fragrance of snowflakes and wind—that was Sylvia, even in the middle of summer—her skin and hair was fresh with the scent of the outdoors.
“I missed you so much,” I moaned, and held her, desperately clinging to the wreckage of washed-up dreams.
The surf was pounding in my ears and the waves were pulling me under.
I woke up gasping for air and stared into the eyes of the kitten clinging to my chest.
The experience shook me to the core of my being.
I was still trembling a half hour later, sitting by the fire with the comforter wrapped around me, sipping a hot coffee and hearing the dark wind’s monody.
I had no explanation for what happened but I knew it wasn’t a dream or what some might consider a nightmare.
It was so real and it was tangible.
I could still hear shallow breathing and feel the warmth of her lips. It was so concrete and physical as the wail of the wind or the soft flutter of the fireplace flames.
And even as I sat here doubting my own senses, I could hear the velvety sound of her whisper, “Come back to bed, Neil.”
The power was restored in the early morning and the kitten was gone. I let her out briefly, and when I came back to let her in she was nowhere to be found.
And strangely, there were no paw prints in the fresh snow.
Could that strange kitten I named Sylvia somehow be the medium for her soul? If I held with Pythagorus and believed in metempsychosis, the transmigration of human souls into the bodies of animals, I might have thought so—but I was no mystic.
The plow had been through overnight, and the roads were open.
I packed my gear in the car and was gone by mid-morning.
Looking back on the experience, I’m plagued with uncertainty.
Somehow I’ve separated myself from that profound grief, and have even considered joining an on-line dating service.
I’m thankful for Marnie loaning me her cottage and giving me an opportunity to break out of my rut.
And I’m thankful too for this precious experience.
It was Sylvia’s’s parting gift to me and it’s marked a turning point in my life
Marnie occasionally alludes to Jill as if trailing a lure across my path—but despite being bright and shiny, it reminds me of the depths of my despair—and for that, there’s no turning back.
But I’m beginning to write again, which makes Tom Eaton, my publisher, happy.
His wife, Cat, has even suggested a cottage on Florida’s Gulf side as a writer’s getaway, but I think I’ll pass on lonely beaches and Gulf breezes.
